"Why, father, when did you get up?" he asked.
"I've been this way all night," said Joe. "I didn't shut my eyes in sleep last night."
"Were you sick?"
"No; I have been worrying about myself. Here you are making all the money that comes into the house and I ain't making a thing. I get that way sometimes," said Joe, drawing on his imagination, "and I don't sleep for three or four nights."
"But, father, if you would only try to get work we could get along a great deal better," said Hank.
"I can't find any work to suit me. This wound in my side bothers me awful."
Hank didn't say any more. When he got to talking about the wound in his side, which he wouldn't have known he had there if he did not look at the scar now and then, it shut off all argument. He went into the kitchen and started the fire, after which he came out with his hat on.
"I guess I'll go now," said he. "Bob always has a cup of coffee waiting for me. Good-bye."
"I reckon all the fishing you do with Bob Nellis to-day won't hurt you much," said Joe, with a chuckle. "If the J. W. Smart is as swift as they say she is, she's a hundred miles at sea. I will go and hide this money while I am about it, for if anything should get out on me I'd be in a fix."
He sat up on the lounge, yawned and stretched himself, and went out behind the house. He found a hoe there, where it had remained in all sorts of weather—ever since, in fact, he had got through hoeing a half-row of peas—and with it in his hand he vanished behind some currant-bushes. Joe was a worker if he set about it, and in five minutes he had a hole dug and his roll of bills covered up. When his wife called him to breakfast he was busy in pulling the weeds from some string-beans.